Keeping watch on Trendwest / WorldMark by Wyndham

Friday, December 25, 2009

How to get a FREE Cruise Ship holiday!

Have you ever considered taking a cruise instead of staying in typical timeshare accommodation?

I've just been on a cruise with my family and we had an absolutely fantastic holiday! We went on the Royal Caribbean ship Rhapsody of the Seas, for a 10-day cruise in Australia.

Let me tell you — having a holiday on a cruise ship is vastly different to a land adventure. You can do as much or as little as you want, you are fully pampered and there's activities for the kids. If you want to learn more about my cruise, see the review I posted on the Cruise Critic website.

However, there's one thing I learned onboard that I'd like to pass along. I discovered how some people (actually MANY people) get free/low-cost cruises... they serve as Enrichment Lecturers, speakers, face painters, entertainers and even gentlemen dance partners. By working a few hours on each 'at sea' day, they get a free cruise in return.

It's true — for example, Sixth Star Entertainment have listings of openings available. Go check them out!

Interestingly, the cruise ships provide a free cruise to the Enrichment instructors, but Sixth Star charge the instructors $40/day as their 'cut'. Apparently, it's possible to go directly to the cruise companies and get the cruise totally free. There's even a website called SpeakersCruiseFree.com that tells you how to do it. They sell an eBook for $97, which can probably give you a FREE $4000 cruise! (If any of you buy the book, let me know what you think!)

Here's a PDF that explains the benefits: The Top 5 Cruise Lines Enrichment Programs and How You Can Exploit Them To Get Free Cruises

So, as you sit there beside your timeshare pool, year after year, think about taking a cruise instead. You might even be able to use some of your timeshare points to get a cruise through Interval. Good luck!

-- Fabbo
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Tuesday, December 22, 2009

The Scammers are being Scammed

Hehe. Looks like some people called National Vacation Sales and Service are trying to scam Worldmark owners.

A recent Redseason.com.au newsletter says:

There is a resale company in the USA that has somehow managed to get a hold of the full member listing for all Worldmark owners (including owner names, phone numbers and the number of credits owned by each member). I would love to know how they obtained this information as Wyndham really should not be releasing personal information to these guys.

The company is called National Vacation Sales and Service and operates out of Florida USA and is offering ridiculously high prices to rent or buy memberships.

One member who contacted me was offered over A$9000 just to rent her available points on a 7000 credit membership. This is definitely a scam as they could buy the full membership from us for under A$7000 so please do not fall for overseas companies offering high prices for your membership - no doubt if you accepted you would be asked for some sort of listing fee or to provide your bank details to them.


A bit of Google searching also revealed a warning on the Worldmark website. Interestingly, this is a warning to Worldmark South Pacific owners.

This started to look interesting, and a bit more searching found this transcript on Timeshare Users Group Online Community Forums:

Q:How did you get my Mom's name?

A: Our financing company, Tamaac sent out a postcard to people with timeshares asking if they wanted to sell it, when they didnt respond, they passed the name to my company, so we called your Mom.

Q: What's the $1500 for? It seems potentially risky, throwing nearly 10% of the value of the property for a potential sale.
A: That's $1500 she would have to spend anyway if she were going to sell it to get the same documents.

(Unsolicited, from him): We wouldn't even be contacting you if we didn't need your property.

Q: So you're saying you have a buyer on the line, right now?
A: it's against the law for us to tell you that.

Q: Well, it seems that if you had a buyer on the line, why wouldn't your company just cover those costs, against the price of the timeshare? That way, when she sold it, she would receive $18,000, minus the $1500 of the cost of processing those documents.

A: Well that would be against the law. We're not allowed to work on commission.


The transcript has more and makes a fun read!

So, it looks like the standard Nigerian 419 scam that tries to get your money up-front with the promise of a later financial return. Yeah, sure!

-- Fabbo
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Monday, December 07, 2009

One in a Million (dollars, that is)

I received this cryptic message as a comment on this blog:


go to SMALL CLAIMS COURT, you can usually file there up to $10,000.00 and in some states highter. I filed a class action suit and won, I also filed a lawusuit with 10 other and 8 were setteled for around $500,000.00 each, I won a jury verdict for $ONE MILLION IN MARCH OF 2009, MY ATTORNEYS WAS gARY gWILLIAM OF oAKLAND caLIFORNIA AT 510 83205411


It had the name of 'Steve Wiley' attached. So, I did a Google search and found some interesting history. It dates back to 2007 when Wiley, who apparently worked at Trendwest for 13 years and sued them for wrongful termination and age discrimination.

More to the point, he also accused Trendwest (now Wyndham) of selling more memberships than available capacity. That is, he claimed that there was insufficient capacity in Worldmark properties for members to actually use all their points to obtain bookings.

I don't have any more information on the topic, but it certainly makes an interesting topic, especially if Trendwest/Worldmark was found guilty of such matters.

Oh, and it just goes to prove... don't upset your staff, or they'll make your life hell!

-- Fabbo
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